Buyers Guide Volume 1
Buyers Guide Volume 1
Buyers Guide Volume 1
BUYER’S GUIDE
TO CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT
PLATFORM
VOLUME 1
03 04 06
Introduction Change in customer Modern
behaviour, attitude, purchase path
and psyche
07 08 10
Tenets for Evolution of Engagement
customer-centricity customer platform as
engagement growth enabler
12 16 18
Critical role of Warning signs How to build a
engagement highlighting need customer-first
platform for for an engagement mindset before
modern teams platform investing in a tool?
23 24 24
Conclusion About Additional
MoEngage reading
Introduction
Customer Engagement Platform - the Panacea understanding user behavior, personalizing
for All CX and Customer-Centric Issues recommendations, dissolving silos between
analytics, engagement and automation, and
‘You’ve got to start with the customer enhancing cross-team collaboration. But as
experience and work back toward the the saying goes, ‘a journey of a thousand
technology, not the other way around.’ miles begins with a single step.’ That single
step is implementing an intelligent Customer
- Steve Jobs Engagement Platform!
We live in a world with customer experiences If properly implemented, the right Customer
connected across multiple devices and Engagement Platform breaks down silos, breeds
channels, where customers have a plethora of collaboration, helps you better understand
product and service options to choose from. customer behavior, and improves segmentation
Quality of experience is effectively taking over and targeting to drive increase in conversions
price as the key differentiator between offerings. while simultaneously boosting retention.
Hence, it is imperative for brands to adopt a But how do you find the right Customer
customer-centric approach. Understanding and Engagement Platform for your business? This
analyzing user behavior is the key to providing e-book uncovers the core capabilities you need
personalized and relevant experience, which, in to look for while solving the buy vs. build and
turn, increases conversion, retains existing users point vs. integrated solution debate, to help
and creates brand loyalists. you choose the right technology to add to your
martech stack. Ready for the journey to find the
The journey to becoming a customer-obsessed right Customer Engagement Platform?
brand is long, hard and riddled with issues of
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Change in customer behaviour,
attitude, and psyche
In a world that is becoming increasingly digital- option-fatigue and the tyranny of choices have
first and bolstered by social media networks, affected the decision making process, price
customers are driving when, where and how comparison engines, coupled with voices of Key
they engage with brands. Customers have Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and influencers, are
become the sculptors of their own experience helping users make informed purchases.
in the truest sense of the word, demanding
and expecting service, thereby shaping the The ever widening gap between customer
product offerings they then consume. The expectations and a brand’s ability to fulfill them
digital revolution has armed customers with is one of the biggest issues that contemporary
an ever expanding range of product and marketers are aiming to resolve. In order to
service choices and provided a platform to understand how customer expectations have
share their experience. Gone are the days of altered, it is important to take note of changes in
brands dictating and influencing customer user activity and attitudes along with how they
expectations. We are in a new era of skepticism affect purchase decisions.
and careful inspection of brand promises. While
Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
User activity & attitudes
In essence, customers are actively pulling same customers share their experiences, in turn
information (from reviews, ratings, social influencing prospective buyers. It is about time
media chatter) rather than have brands that brands shed their siloed approach to tackling
push it to them (advertising channels). This different touchpoints and start consolidating user
extends beyond the purchase phase and engagement across all channels through consistent
well into the post-purchase stage where the communication.
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Modern purchase path
The shift in power dynamics between customers touchpoints. The modern purchase path, driven
and brands has reshaped the traditional by technological advancement and multiple
purchase path. What was once a selection information sources, has taken products out
funnel has morphed into a cycle where of store shelves and put them inside the digital
customers have the choice to decide how they ecosystem, transcending geographical barriers
interact and engage with brands across several to make transactions seamless and intuitive.
There has been a massive paradigm shift, one that has changed the customer-brand relationship
from supply driven to demand driven with the former in the driver’s seat.
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Tenets for customer-centricity
Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Evolution of
customer engagement
While the omnichannel approach spanning multiple devices and driven by seamless customer
experience offers a huge scope to engage users, it comes with several challenges:
Information gap: The customer profile is often Broken continuity among customer profiles:
limited to an ID or a transaction with limited Owing to cross-channel interaction across
information about preference and device type. multiple devices, identifying and mapping the
various profiles of a single customer becomes
Lack of cohesion between online and offline difficult, leading to loss of continuity.
avatars: Mapping the offline customer identity
to the online one can be particularly difficult due Running guesswork-based campaigns: While
to silos, lack of continuous data flow and loss or cookies provide basic information such as
leakage of data across vendors. device type, they seldom provide anything
in-depth to frame a targeted engagement
campaign. This leads to the creation of generic
campaigns which end up failing to engage
unique prospects/customers.
Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Here’s a look at how customer engagement and targeted marketing have changed, primarily driven
by development in data analytics and segmentation.
Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Engagement platform
as growth enabler
A Customer Engagement Platform is a single such a platform goes all the way to tracking
portal that centralizes, optimizes, tracks and behavior and industry patterns, analyzing all the
analyzes every customer interaction across data that a platform provides, helping teams
several touch points throughout the customer efficiently respond to inquiries, and personalizing
journey, helping brands provide a personalized and testing campaigns to ensure optimum
and delightful experience. From CRM to inbox, customer engagement. This solution also aids
social media, calendars and more, a Customer in streamlining account-based revenue teams
Engagement Platform consolidates all channels by improving efficiency across acquisition,
used by marketing teams to engage customers. retention, up/cross sell and expansion.
Starting from customer communications,
Nike Hong Kong were able to get a significant revenue uplift, a massive 110%
increase in campaign conversion rate along with 32.5% improvement in
website visits by running targeted welcome, cart and browse abandonment
campaigns. They achieved this by segmenting the audience into definitive
groups based on purchase history, device preference and lifecycle stage.
Foregoing guesswork, the team at Nike HK are experimenting with
personalized recommendations on their online stores in real time.
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Armed with data analytics, a Customer Engagement Platform -
Enables brands to Delivers targeted Helps customer service Creates smart and
monitor customer communication by teams provide relevant relevant user
journeys and figure out deducing patterns from communication by segments to provide
relevant engagement behavioral insights. leveraging user data. personalized
opportunities. experience.
Frames productive workflows for Optimizes omnichannel Sets goals and metrics for
better collaboration and engagement and maintains engagement campaigns and
information sharing across consistency in cross-channel measures the results.
teams, thus increasing efficiency communication viz. email, SMS,
of business processes. push, live chat, social platforms
etc.
1Weather, one of the top-rated weather apps on Google Play, with 8 million
active users, were following basic user engagement practices for regular
weather update. But page sessions were lower than expected. The brand
utilized an engagement platform’s analytic capabilities to understand user
behavior and location preferences and were able to increase app opens and
overall engagement rate. 1Weather observed 25 million incremental app opens
with 10% increase in CTRs.
Read More
In order to tackle low test drive registration rate, Toyota Turkey optimized their
mobile web experience (29.8% car searches begin on mobile) and segmented
users based on preferences, interests and browsing history to provide
personalized experiences viz. showing only few but relevant car models to
home page visitors. This strategy combined with CTAs on individual model
pages and exit intent pop-ups enabled the brand to boost test drive
registrations by a mammoth 166%.
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Critical role of engagement
platform for modern teams
Driving efficient
revenue growth
The data-driven processes enabled by a
Customer Engagement Platform help customer
facing teams understand interactions and
measure actions that lead to revenue uplift.
Using technologies such data science, machine
learning, multivariate testing and conversation
analysis, teams are now able to map revenues
to each action, thus identifying what works
and what doesn’t. The teams can then focus
only on actions that add the most value to the
bottomline.
Delivering best-in-class
customer experience
93% customers are likely to make repeat
purchases from brands that offer excellent
experience and service. Engagement is very
much a part of the customer experience where
users expect businesses to interact with them
and address their concerns. The idea is to
consistently dialogue with customers across the
channels that they’re most active on and deliver
value. By automating grunt work, streamlining
workflows and providing behavioral insights, a
Customer Engagement Platform allows teams
to focus on various user segments and identify
gaps to add value, thus providing a seamless and
delightful experience.
Read More
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Improving loyalty and building make them interested in your offering. Frequent
interaction also leads to customers better
strong customer relationships recognizing and connecting with a brand than the
one they seldom hear from.
You can build a healthy and long lasting
relationship with your customers if you It is no surprise that engaged customers contribute
effectively engage with them across all touch significantly to a brand’s revenue. In fact, research
points instead of doing the bare minimum conducted by Bain & Company states that a 5%
required for a conversion. Consistent and increase in customer retention can yield more than
relevant interaction lets your customers know 25% rise in profits. There is no better retention
that you care about their needs, priorities tactic than actively engaging and nurturing
and aspirations. Going beyond your product customers. The comprehensive lifecycle journey
offering and adding real value to their life is the mapped out by a Customer Engagement Platform
key to building a community of brand loyalists helps in identifying unresolved pain points and
who will be highly engaged with your brand reasons for likely drop offs, thus arresting churn
irrespective of your product/service pricing. and improving retention.
Highly absorbing and regular communication
with your customers will ultimately breed trust
and create a community of satisfied customers
who will vouch for your product/service and
act as influencers promoting your business
across forums.
Increasing subscriber
base, arresting churn
and boosting retention
By setting up frequent and relevant
communication with your audience,
a Customer Engagement Platform
helps users realize the value your
brand offers, thus increasing the
chances of subscription. Consistent
communication will help you win
over customers or, at the very least,
Airbnb has made waves in the hospitality industry where competitors are either
forced to replicate their model or play catch up. The brand spent time and
effort in understanding what the customer fundamentally wants and
translated that into a service. Instead of asking how the hotel experience can be
improved, Airbnb aimed to resolve issues such as traveler needs and
belongingness to a place. By anticipating customers’ needs and wants, Airbnb
created a new business model providing a feeling of belonging and trustworthy
service along with a sense of adventure, in return earning goodwill.
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Shortening purchase cycles Carving unique
and improving cross-sell & brand recognition
up-sell opportunities A well planned omnichannel engagement
framework with a clearcut roadmap
A strategy that is properly planned and executed
with the help of a Customer Engagement Platform detailing relevant, continuous and unique
can help in shortening sales cycles, drawing in tone of communication will help customers
and converting prospects, and ultimately reducing differentiate your brand from the competition.
the burden on your sales teams. This can be done In an era of widespread digital noise, every
effectively through running campaigns that inform targeted asset such as a newsletter, blog
and educate customers on best practices, while and social media post will act as a weapon in
anticipating and addressing their needs. Different forging a unique brand identity and recognition.
targeted campaigns showcasing the extra value you
add (compared to your competitors) can be sent to
various audience segments based on the stage of If you are still on the fence about adopting a
their buying journey. Such consistent engagement Customer Engagement Platform, here’s a list of
can help your brand stay on top of the prospect’s warning signs to assist you in making a decision.
mind and have a positive impact on their purchase If you notice more than one of these in your
decision. organization, it’s time to invest in a Customer
Engagement Platform.
The data collected and analyzed by Customer
Engagement Platforms helps you better understand
user behavior and preferences, thus allowing
you to personalize recommendations and better
target up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. This
approach not only helps in providing super-relevant
recommendations but also assists in improving the
average LTV (lifetime value) and order size.
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Kredivo is one of the fastest growing digital payment channels for
e-commerce in Indonesia enabling buyers to apply and qualify for credit and
pay back. Online shoppers make purchases across multiple devices; staying
with them at every step of the way was a challenge Kredivo wanted to
overcome. The brand implemented an omnichannel engagement strategy to
engage and convert new users. Thanks to their Customer Engagement Platform,
Kredivo noticed 64% increase in conversion rate for triggered emails with a
20% uplift in push notification delivery.
Read More
What more do you do for your customers if you’re already an industry leader?
Well, Starbucks has the answer - make your loyal customers feel all the more
special. The brand achieved this through Starbucks Reserve Roastery which
provided loyalists a chance to speak with specialists, be a part of the brewing
process and sample a variety of flavors. By giving this insider look, the
company not only engaged the users but also took their experience beyond just
a morning cuppa.
India’s largest online grocery store, with 4 million+ downloads, BigBasket was
struggling with low push notification delivery across Chinese OEM devices
owing to OS and device-level restrictions. With 51% of the Indian smartphone
market comprising of Chinese OEM devices, the drop in push notification
delivery and engagement negatively impacted Bigbasket’s business. To
overcome this restriction Bigbasket implemented Push Amplification SDK
which is designed to act as a fall back to Google Cloud Messaging and reach
Chinese OEM devices directly. With this implementation, Bigbasket observed
10% aggregate increase in push notification delivery and 16% more
conversions.
Read More
Vedantu, India’s leading online tutoring platform with 500+ teachers, 40000+
students across 1000+ cities and 30+ countries, wasn’t able to reach the right
customers with the right messaging, affecting their engagement strategy. The
brand used Push Amplification SDK to maximize its reach with relevant
messaging across different levels of the onboarding journey. As a result, it
observed a 12% uplift in Push Delivery Rates across all devices and a 6%
increase in adoption and engagement.
Read More
If you are still on the fence about adopting a Customer Engagement Platform, here’s a list of warning
signs to assist you in making a decision. If you notice more than one of these in your organization, it’s
time to invest in a Customer Engagement Platform.
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Warning signs highlighting need
for an engagement platform
While weighing the pros and cons of integrating a customer engagement platform, don’t forget
to factor in the revenue loss from missed sales opportunities, burden of manual data entry and
workflows, breakdown of inter-team collaboration and inability to provide personalized and targeted
experience to each customer.
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Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
Lack of team Questionable
collaboration and customer
accountability: satisfaction:
Not having a platform that enables tracking Low satisfaction scores, increasing complaint
of interdepartmental functions creates silos, volume and negative response to surveys might
offering no visibility into each other’s work. In indicate a poor experience. The reason could be
essence, teams don’t collaborate and hence something as simple as not targeting preferred
don’t understand how their work impacts others channels. For instance, if a customer prefers
and vice versa. This leads to customers and to be reached via mobile push and you send
prospects being bounced around as teams an email, it would obviously annoy the user
are unsure of their needs. Often, due to no and account for poor customer experience.
one taking charge, a customer leaves or a Customer Engagement Platforms provide you
sales opportunity falls through. A Customer with insight into customer preferences and
Engagement Platform provides the much also analyze what/where you’re going wrong.
needed visibility into customer interaction and Such platforms allow you to target the right
lifecycle, helping teams address customer user segment using the right channel, improving
needs, understand drop offs and improve customer satisfaction rates.
accordingly.
Untapped selling
potential and Basic Tenets of building
opportunities: effective customer
engagement
Manual tracking and nurturing of leads
eventually results in loss of sales opportunities. Here’s how most brands can
By leveraging capabilities of a Customer approach drafting a winning customer
Engagement Platform, follow ups can be engagement strategy.
automated. Nurture programs can be seamlessly
picked up through the data and insights Define an ideal customer base
collected on the platform, effectively restarting to target all communcation
conversations and adding value.
Create content based on
customer history
Scope of Create an omnichannel, definitive
scalability: roadmap to improve engagement
Behavioural changes Modern purchase path Customer-centricity tenets Growth enabler Critical role Warning signs
How to build a customer-first
mindset before investing in a tool?
Many companies have discovered that creating and maintaining a successful business in the age
of the customer depends, first and foremost, on developing a customer-centric culture. In such an
environment, leaders and employees understand the company’s brand promise and are committed
to delivering an exceptional CX. Commitment to the customer is woven into the fabric of the
organization, and it plays a critical role in aligning functions, enabling agility and spurring innovation.
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Empower Prioritize
employees to retention and
spur innovation: understand churn
Because customer-focused companies need Once a deal is closed, add more value to the
to place a premium on innovation, their policies customer’s experience. It increases chances
should make risk a virtue if it produces an of retention (five to twenty five times cheaper
exceptional customer experience. To promote than acquiring new users). To improve
innovation, empower employees with information retention and reduce churn, understand loyalty
and give them the autonomy to make decisions and why customers are leaving. Analyze
that can improve products and services. It can behavioral data, conduct surveys, and interact
help employees try out novel ideas, take carefully with customers to get a better picture.
considered risks and feel greater ownership of the
customer experience.
Analyze and
distribute customer
data routinely
Customer obsession is probably the
Analyze customer data for trends and common
most important attribute associated
problems. Share your findings with the rest of
with Amazon. It is the first of their your organization. This data helps marketing,
14 Leadership Principles, and the sales and customer service teams delight your
company famously leaves one open customers.
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Being data oriented is absolutely essential to being customer-obsessed. This is backed by
Forrester data which reports that insight-driven public companies are expected to grow to
$1.2 trillion in revenue in 2020 from $333 billion in 2015.
Being committed
to customer A DMS study found that
companies are seven times more
obsession likely to close a sales opportunity
Many enterprises already focus on meeting when they reach out to a
customer needs but they make the critical customer within an hour of the
mistake of not doing it in real time. customer contacting them.
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Unfortunately, two-thirds of companies don’t have a system for delivering real-time service. This can
prove fatal as customers today have a strong voice and bad news travels fast over social media.
Boeing Training & Flight Services prioritized customer centricity as a growth acceleration strategy
after realizing that in order to be successful, they needed to be more focused on customers than ever.
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Use cases from some of the most
Customer-obsessed companies
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Conclusion
With a plethora of readily available choices, We have also discussed the critical role played
and powered by social media the modern by an engagement platform in driving revenue
customer has changed. They have become growth, and the warning signs that you
more decisive, have strong preferences need one.
and dislikes, and demand a seamless
experience across all channels. In this era of We hope that you now understand the
redefined customer demands, brands need importance of building a customer-first
to understand user behavior and adapt their mindset in your organization, and integrating
engagement strategies accordingly. an engagement platform in your martech
stack. Check out volume two to understand
Through volume one of our buyer’s guide, we the barriers to implementing an engagement
have tried to address these concerns by laying platform and get an exhaustive selection
down the change in customer behavior and criteria checklist for choosing the right
usage patterns, analyzing modern purchase engagement platform!
path, highlighting evolution of engagement
and targeting, and providing the basic tenets
for being customer-centric.
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About MoEngage
MoEngage is an intelligent customer named MoEngage as the Leader under
engagement platform, built for the user- Mobile Marketing Platforms. Also, MoEngage
obsessed marketer. With AI-powered customer has been identified as a Strong Performer
journey orchestration, personalization in Forrester Wave Mobile Engagement
capabilities, and in-built analytics, Automation 2020 report.
MoEngage enables hyper-personalization at
scale across mobile, email, web, SMS, and To learn more about an intelligent
messaging channels. Fortune 500 brands Customer Engagement Platform,
and Enterprises across 35+ countries such as
Deutsche Telekom, Samsung, Ally Financial, visit: www.moengage.com
Vodafone, and McAfee along with internet-
first brands such as Flipkart, Ola, OYO, For any questions related to
Bigbasket, and Tokopedia use MoEngage to the e-book, please reach out to
orchestrate efficient customer engagement.
The recent Gartner Magic Quadrant 2020 [email protected]
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